She had black smudges below her eyes and streaks of mascara running down her cheeks. She didn’t look like the usual Dead Elvises groupie.
Maxwell nodded to the clerk—Ezra again—as they passed, and Ezra waved lazily. The woman was staggering, and Maxwell put an arm around her to steady her. What was he doing with her?
They made their way to the spot by the chocolate-covered raisins, and I scooted back so there was no way Maxwell could see me if he happened to glance out the window. I couldn’t remember there being anything behind me, so when I backed into something, I jumped.
Two strong arms wrapped around me from behind, pinning my arms to my sides.
“Hey, Nik. Thought you might show up.” Cole’s voice was at my ear.
I struggled to get out of his grasp.
“Let me go!”
“Why? You wanted to know what happens at the Shop-n-Go. Let’s find out, shall we?” He forced me closer to the window. The woman was sitting on the floor, leaning against the racks of powdered doughnuts. Maxwell crouched down beside her and held out a small white object in the palm of his hand.
“What is that?” I said.
“Shhh. Just watch.”
The woman looked up at Maxwell with a pathetic expression on her face, and then she nodded resolutely. Max handed her the object, and the woman brought it to her lips.
“No!” I shouted, and I threw my weight against Cole, trying to break free. I didn’t even know what the pill contained, but coming from Maxwell it couldn’t be good. I put my foot against the wall below the window and pushed off, but Cole absorbed the force and grabbed my wrist, pinning it behind my back and twisting to cause enough pain to make me freeze.
“Stop fighting, Nik. I’m not trying to hurt you.” He let up a tiny bit. “Do you promise to settle down?” I nodded. “Good. I just don’t want you to miss the one thing you’ve been dying to see.”
The woman put the pill in her mouth and swallowed. She closed her eyes and sank further against the racks. Maxwell left her there and walked out of the store. The woman looked like she had fallen asleep.
And then something strange happened. Her skin developed a glossy sheen, as if she were suddenly covered in liquid. Her eyes shot open, and her mouth contorted into a silent scream … then she dropped through the ground.
What the…? I blinked, trying to make sense of what I just saw. She’d slipped through the floor, as if she were a ghost. There was no gaping hole left behind, no fissure in the tile. Nothing left.
Cole eased his grip on my wrist and helped me stand. He held my hand in his, examining the welts he’d made on my skin. “Sorry, Nik.”
I yanked my hand away, and he gave me an impish grin.
“No permanent damage.”
I pointed at the window. “What was that? What happened to her?”
“I told you we have to make sacrifices to our queen. Feed the Tunnels. That woman you saw in there was a sad, lost soul, looking for an easy way out of her miserable existence. Maxwell gave it to her.”
“The Tunnels? An easy way out?” I said, incredulous.
Cole nodded. “Think about it, Nik. It’s a hell of a lot better than suicide. It’s like suicide lite. She’ll become a physical part of the Tunnels, and it will be a long time before she feels pain, because she has so many layers of self-loathing.”
“What was the pill she took? Drugs?”
“You know we don’t need drugs. That pill contained a few of Maxwell’s hairs. You can’t get to the Everneath without an Everliving host. What do your mythology books call him? A ferryman? That pill is the ferryman who escorts humans to the Everneath. The sacrifice takes the pill, and she has part of an Everliving inside of her. It’s the only way she can go through.”
“Why does it happen here? What’s so special about the Shop-n-Go?”
“You’ve heard of the River Styx?” I nodded. “There are several spots throughout the world like it, where the wall separating the Surface and the Everneath is thin. Paper thin. Legend calls these places rivers. A way to get from one world to the other. Entrances to the Everneath. This store was built over one of the rivers. Around here it’s the easiest access to the Everneath.”
“I don’t remember you taking me here before the Feed.”
“That’s because you had a personal host—me. I can take you to the Everneath anytime. From anywhere.”
“Then why don’t you take me now?”
He gave me a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “Help you leave early? I’d never be able to live with myself.” His voice grew quiet. “Even now I’m not sure I’ll be able to survive without you.”
I shook my head slowly. “Sacrifices. Offerings. Suicide lite. I’d say there’s not much left you couldn’t live with. There’s no end to your evil.”
Cole chuckled. “There is no evil. There is no good. There is only life, and the absence of life.” He stepped in front of me and leaned in closer. I was up against the wall, so there was nowhere for me to go. “We are life.”
I squeezed my eyes shut and leaned my head back against the wall until I could feel that Cole had moved away.
“So, Nik. You wanted a quick way to the Tunnels.” He gestured toward the Shop-n-Go. “This is the gateway to the Everneath. It’s like your own River Styx.” He pulled me in front of the window so we had a clear view of the floor in the back of the store. “I won’t take you there personally, but I’ll give you a piece of my hair.” He plucked one off his head and put it in my hand and closed my fingers around it. “All you have to do is go inside and swallow it.”
He let go of my hand. “You’ll slip through the floor, to the Fields, where hundreds of Shades will find you, wrap you in darkness, and carry you off to the Tunnels.” He put his lips to my ear, so I could feel his breath on my neck, and whispered, “You were so desperate to go. Here’s your chance. It’s now or never. Are you going to take it?”
My breath fogged up the window as I thought about that woman, her face a silent scream, and then gone forever. I thought about my father, and Tommy, and the fact that I wasn’t ready to say good-bye. There hadn’t been enough time to make up for anything.
I thought about Jack, and how he was so angry with me, and how I wasn’t finished with him. How his hand used to fit mine so perfectly, and if I left now, I’d never have the chance to feel it again. I couldn’t leave him the way things were now.
And then I realized the truth. I left him once on the other side of the century. I couldn’t leave him of my own volition ever again. The Tunnels were going to have to take me. I didn’t have what it took to go early.
“You win,” I said to Cole. “I won’t go early.”
He kissed me on the cheek and let out a sigh. “I don’t know what I’d do without you, Nik.”
I remembered when I’d said the same thing to him. I’d thought he was my hero.
LAST YEAR
The GraphX Shop. One week before the Feed.
“Have you heard from Jack?”
Cole and I were in the back room of the GraphX Shop again, making more T-shirts with the Elvis wraith picture. Cole had been right. On the night of the concert at the Dead Goat Saloon, the T-shirts had sold out, and a long list of people had signed up for more.
I agreed to help him, mostly because it was a good way to pass the time.
“He’s not allowed to communicate with the outside world,” I answered. “Something about keeping his head in the game.”
Cole gave me a strange look. “Huh. Max heard from Meredith, but maybe she was breaking the rules.”
I shrugged. “Did she have any good stories?”
“No,” he answered immediately, and then he was quiet. We worked in silence for a few minutes. His guitar hung down his back. Cole could be rock climbing and he’d probably still carry the thing.
“Do you ever take it off?” I said. “The guitar, I mean.”
Cole laid a shirt on the counter and smoothed the wrinkles. “Nope.”
“Why not?”
He picked up a folded shirt from the top of the stack and shook it out. “It’s part of me. Would you go to school without your hand?”
“I don’t think that’s a useful comparison.”
He laughed as he dragged the blade across the silk screen. “So, this thing with you and Jack.”
“Yeah?”
He lifted the screen and examined the print before he looked up. When he did, he had a small smile on his face. “Is it love?”
The question threw me. It didn’t seem like a friend asking a friend. It felt more like Cole was defining boundaries. But maybe that was just my imagination.
I took a deep breath. “Um…” I twisted toward the counter where the T-shirts had been stacked, but they were all gone. I looked at the floor. My fingernails. The paint. Everywhere but his face. Why was I fumbling all of a sudden? “Um… Where’d that come from?” I finally lifted my gaze to meet his. Could I possibly have been any more flustered?
He raised an eyebrow and reached toward me. I flinched back before I realized he was reaching behind me, to where a second pile of shirts was stacked. At my reaction, he held his hands up in an innocent gesture, then pointed to the shirts. “The shirts, Nik. I’m getting a shirt.”
“Right.” I shook my head and made a noise that sounded like a nervous giggle. “So, um, why do you ask about … me and Jack?” I couldn’t bring myself to say the L-word.
He flattened the new shirt and then bladed another screen. “I don’t know. It’s just that the more time I spend with you, I don’t know. I don’t see it. You and him.”
“You don’t know him.”
He shook his head and drew in a breath. “You know what? It’s none of my business. You coming to the concert tomorrow night?”
“Where?”
“The Spur. It’s already sold out.”
“Well, then, no. I didn’t buy a ticket.”
He sighed. “Nik, you never need to buy a ticket. You could watch it from backstage if you want.”
“Really?”
“Sure. It’s no big deal.”
“It is to me. My friends will be so jealous.”
“You’re only saying that to make me feel good.”
“Shut up. You know how much people love you around here.” I shook my head as I ran the paddle along my silk screen.
“Do you like me around here?”
I startled, and my hands fumbled with the paddle as my cheeks went pink. I didn’t realize there was a fold on the shirt. “Oh crap. Sorry, I messed this one up.”
I held it up. It looked like Elvis’s face had been cut in half and then put back together by Picasso. I was about to toss it, but Cole grabbed it from me.
“No way. This one is going to be famous someday. Like that upside-down airplane stamp.”
I laughed, relieved the awkward moment had passed. He grabbed a Sharpie off one of the counters and quickly autographed the shirt. He was beaming at it like it was the coolest thing he’d ever seen.
“Cole, in case I haven’t mentioned it, I appreciate you letting me tag along lately,” I said.
He waved me away in response.
“No, really. Thanks. I don’t know what I’d do without you. I mean, it’s sorta been a difficult week for me—”
“With Jack gone?”
“No. Well, yes, that too, but … the man who was driving the car that killed my mom, he’s on trial. And I’m trying not to watch, but it’s everywhere. And everyone who knows me seems to think I want to talk about it, when really all I want to do is ignore it.” I didn’t know why I was telling Cole all of this. I hadn’t even told Jules. “So … thanks for the distraction.”
Cole brought the shirt over and put it in my hands. “I like having you around,” he said. “It’s too bad football camp will be over so soon.”
At the mention of football camp, I thought back to his short reply about Meredith, and for some reason I wondered if he was holding back. “That phone call from Meredith…”
He looked away. “What about it?”
There it was. Evasiveness. I could see it.
“Did she say anything about Jack?”
He didn’t look at me. “Not that I can remember. Hey, the band is going to run the river this afternoon. You up for more distraction?”
I thought about pressing him, but why would he purposely hold something back? He’d probably think I was being paranoid, so I dropped it. “Are you sure they won’t mind if I come?”
“No. Who doesn’t want a fifth wheel? Although it would be better if you weighed a little bit more.”
I grinned. “I’ll eat a few cheeseburgers on the drive.”
When I got to the upper banks of the Weber River, Cole and his bandmates were hoisting the raft off a large white van. They divvied up the life jackets, and then we were pushing away from the shoreline.